EDITORIAL: CBS Sports takes high road after NCAA injury

News editors and program directors make decisions every day in an effort to inform without gratuitously offending the audiences on which they depend.

A textbook case of news judgment erring on the side of restraint was exercised Sunday by CBS Sports, when the TV network limited replay of a gruesome injury to a college basketball player.

University of Louisville player Kevin Ware attempted to block a shot in a regional National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament game against Duke. Ware landed awkwardly and suffered a catastrophic break of his leg, leaving the fractured tibia protruding from his skin.

CBS Sports captured that event up close as it happened, but chose to show it in replay only from a distant angle. At that, the network, which had exclusive live video rights to the game, only replayed the injury twice.

The head of CBS Sports, Sean McManus, said, "I just didn't think we had any obligation to be the facilitator of putting that footage back on the screen. We documented it, we described it and we showed it, and I think that was enough."

Hear, hear! Well done and well put.

As a news item, the injury was handled with similar restraint by other broadcast networks over the next 24 hours. Some networks didn't show the injury; others showed it but blurred the leg.

The Associated Press noted that this handling, however, was in marked contrast to a similar injury nearly 30 years ago, when National Football League quarterback Joe Theismann broke his leg during a televised game. Repeated replays from various angles showed the compound fracture in gory detail.

What's changed since 1985 is the ability of news consumers to find just about anything they want somewhere on the Internet, an option that, as one observer put it, allows the networks to "take the high road."

Sure enough, the up-close video of the injury was quickly pirated onto YouTube where the top four postings recorded more than 2.4 million views within the first couple of days.

And, no, we didn't watch it.

And, no, we're not posting it here.

Editor's note: The headline of this editorial was modified 08:12 AM 04/4/2013 to correctly identify the piece as an editorial.